Get after it.
It’s Sunday morning, it’s raining, EDM is filling the airwaves and I am gearing up to head home to my parents in the Hammer. Every time I pull into my parents driveway, it reminds me of the countless hours I spent playing road hockey, pitching practice and basketball. One specific basketball game in the driveway always comes to mind; it changed the way I viewed the world forever when I was 12. I wrote this piece a few months ago but as I’m heading home the story was on my mind. Hear you go….. I hope you enjoy!
When I was younger, I loved playing team sports. I played hockey, basketball and baseball. I loved them all, but basketball was my favourite. I played the game with my heart and soul.
The house league basketball league I was a part of was for boys in grades 2–8. The league was split into 3 different divisions based on grade levels. I played every year from grade 2 through 7 and had never been on a team that had gone to the championship. After my season ended in grade 7, I promised myself I would do whatever was necessary to be on a team that reached finals in my last season.
If you have ever met me, basketball is not a sport you would picture me playing, especially as a kid. In elementary school I was pretty fat, about average height and by no means the most naturally talented at basketball. But luckily I had the opportunity to practice and learn.
As a kid, my parents had a large driveway with a basketball net. Every summer, I would play basketball with my brothers, friends and dad in the driveway.
Playing one-on-one games against my brothers would get pretty intense as sibling rivalry took over. But the games against my dad were the ones I wanted to win the most, although I could never seem to beat him. He had that “old man” strength that always overpowered me.
However, there was game against my dad, I had a chance to win. I had the ball at the opposite end of the driveway from the net. My dad was playing tough defence, but I dribbled passed him to the left and was headed for a layup. As I jumped to make the layup, my father, running after me let out a blood curdling scream. “AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!” I was so startled from the yell, not only did I miss the layup, my dad grab the ball scored.
In my final year of basketball, my team was called the team the Big Cheese. Early in the season we had been winning and it seemed like winning the championship was a real possibility. However, somewhere around mid-season we started playing some better teams and we started losing games. I was devastated. I was not talented enough to score 30 points and win games and I didn’t know how to help my team.
One game, we were playing a team that had one of the best players in the league. He could shoot, pass, dribble and score. We were losing the game and I was guarding their best player. He had the ball at the top of the key, deked left and then quickly made a move to the right. I was beat and he sailed past me. But as he headed for the net a light bulb went off in my head.
For 6 seasons I had played basketball all wrong. I played the way I thought good basketball was supposed to be played. I tried to score, make great passes, and dribble around my opponents. But none of these were my strengths.
As he headed for the net, I brought the rules I had learned in my parents’ driveway to the game. As he jumped to make a layup I let out the same blood curdling yell my dad has used on me. He was so petrified, he threw the ball completely over the top of the backboard and everyone on the court stopped and looked at me.
From that moment on, I played every game like an animal. It was time to leverage my strengths. I was bigger than most kids and I was going to use this to my advantage. If you tried to drive to the net, I was going to make you pay. I never took a soft foul again. I threw body checks at you when you dribbled, I screamed when you shot and I would purposely run you over when I had the ball.
Most people make their opponents lives nightmares by skill, but I made their lives nightmares by getting under your skin. I was doing such a great job at frustrating other team’s players that the parents on the other teams would boo me. Take a second to let that sink in for a second… a 12-year kid getting booed by a crowd of parents. I didn’t like getting booed, but it didn’t matter. It was the price of going after what I wanted.
That season we won the championship. In fact we never lost a game after I first let out that scream. When teams played us, players would take cheap shots at me, yell at me when I shot and the games would turn into a circus. I had learned that I was not talented enough to beat other teams on skill, so I did my best to get other teams to play into my strengths.
Always play to your strengths. Understand what it is that you are good at and use it your advantage. Just because we think that things are done a certain way, does not mean it is the only way.
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